Senegal

About 810,000 people in the country (Senegal) are facing hunger, and the national cereal production is down by 36 percent compared to 2010, according to a study by the Senegalese government and the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP). The situation is part of the wider crisis in the Sahel region - a semi-arid belt of land south of the Sahara desert - where the United Nations estimates that more than 15 million people are facing food insecurity because of a combination of drought, failed crops, insect infestations, high food prices and conflict. (..) Senegal, when compared to other governments in the Sahel region, was late to declare it was facing a food crisis.

Aid agencies say funding is urgently needed to stave off a food crisis in the band of dry, drought-ridden territory that stretches from Senegal to Chad called the Sahel. (..) Humanitarian workers say severe food shortages threaten more than six million people in Niger. All together, United Nations agencies, including the World Food Program, are calling for just over $1 billion to head off the food crisis in the Sahel this year.

"WFP is proud to have been involved in this project that has allowed the people of Fayil to become rice producers once again. Rice is the staple food of Senegal and its production will help in the fight against hunger ," said Thomas Yanga, who coordinates WFP's activities across 19 countries in West and Central Africa.

"The Great Green Wall is a crazy project". The head of the Senegal Great Green Wall agency, Colonel Matar Cissé, and, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade have said this. (..)Already in its fourth year in Senegal, Malek Triki, World Food Programme spokesman for West Africa, states that already 6.65 million trees have been planted, reforesting more than 10,000.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing food vouchers to 7,500 households in 26 districts of the town of Ziguinchor, southern Senegal, through the implementation of a pilot project launched in April, according to an official statement received Wednesday by PANA.

More than 15 percent of rural Senegalese homes do not have enough food to get by and families are being forced to make meals smaller due to high rice prices, the World Food Programme said Thursday. A study presented in Dakar by the UN agency showed that "15.1 percent of rural households are food insecure" as a result of insufficient or poorly balanced meals.

The office of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Senegal on Tuesday launched a pilot project to provide food ration to populations in the suburbs of Dakar, the Senegalese capital, and the region of Ziguinchor in the south of the country.

Families in Senegal’s Casamance region have less to spend and less to eat this lean season because of a drastic drop in mango production, residents and agriculture experts say. (..) Fruit-destroying insects and increased soil salinity have also hit production, according to William Diatta, WFP senior programme officer and acting head of the Ziguinchor sub-office. “A lot more households find themselves vulnerable this year,” Diatta told IRIN.

Several UN agencies and NGOs are calling for a greater mobilization of aid workers and funding in the West African Sahel to meet the needs of a population facing one of the worst nutrition crises in recent years. (..) Only 57 percent of the US$190 million emergency appeal by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Niger is funded. In Chad, the World Food Programme (WFP) still lacks $23 million of the $65 million required for the food crisis.